


The Adventures of Mags and Friends

by MsWikit



Series: Spare Parts Universe [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Gen, Light-Hearted, Possible occasional cameos from canon characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-03-31 10:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3974005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsWikit/pseuds/MsWikit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the events of Spare Parts, Shepard's clone sets out to discover who she truly is as a person. Joined by a ragtag group of mercenaries, Mags begins to discover what it truly means to step out of her predecessor's enormous shadow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tsughi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsughi/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Spare Parts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2762003) by [MsWikit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsWikit/pseuds/MsWikit). 



> Some of you have been wanting to see a bit more of Mags and her friends. I decided I'd create this fic for that express purpose; it will, unfortunately, update rather sporadically as I will be devoting my time to other stories. (Such as Sins of the Father, which you should all definitely read.) This fic is mostly just for my own amusement, and I will post updates whenever the urge strikes. I hope you all enjoy!

_Magdalene._

She turns the name over in her head. She can’t remember where she first heard it. Maybe on a vid, or in something she read. But each time she tries to think of a name, it pops into the forefront of her mind. 

_Magdalene Shepard._

Well, maybe not the Shepard part. After her doctors on Ilium blabbed, the last thing she needs to do is link herself to the Commander. Especially not since they look so similar. Even after the surgeries and the hair dye and the colored contacts, if someone were to really look, they would see the Commander’s DNA hiding there. 

Magdalene – she’s decided that, yes, it’s as good a name as any – glances around the club suspiciously. But no one is paying her any attention. They’re watching the asari dancers, or dancing themselves, or drinking until they pass out. She sips at her own drink, comforted by her invisibility. A quarian sits down beside her and signals the bartender for a drink. Magdalene glances at her warily, but relaxes when she seems largely uninterested in who she’s sitting beside.

“Didn’t think I’d see you around anymore,” the bartender says, sliding the quarian a drink.

“Why’s that?” the quarian asks. 

The bartender shrugs. “Figured you’d be dead. Or on the home world.”

“Magnus, you know me better than that,” the quarian replies, her tone playful and chiding. She takes off her mask and sets it on the counter. The action surprises Magdalene- she’s never seen a quarian face before. 

Quarians look fairly human, as it turns out. The main difference Magdalene notices off the bat is the eyes. They’re slightly bigger than a human’s, and have long black eyelashes. This quarian’s irises are silvery, and she doesn’t seem to have pupils. In the pulsing light of the club her eyes seem to be almost…luminous. Her skin is different from a human’s as well. It’s a strange off-white color, and there are faint brown markings that curve over her large eyes. 

The bartender – Magnus, apparently – stares at her in shock. “That a good idea, Raela?”

“Relax,” she says. She downs the drink. A faint shudder runs down her body, and she smacks her lips. “I’ve got the immune system thing covered.” She gestures for another drink. “Isn’t that right, Tick?”

“Affirmative, Creator Raela,” says a synthetic voice, seemingly from nowhere.

“Shit- you have one of those things in _your suit_?” The bartender seems astonished as he passes her another drink.

“Yeah. A bunch of us do now. They’re bolstering our immune systems like you wouldn’t believe,” Raela says. She smirks. Magdalene notices she has other markings; swirls of light brown underneath her eyes that extend into stripes across her cheeks. 

“Is it safe?” Magnus asks. He cleans out a glass and looks at Raela skeptically.

“Yeah, it’s safe,” Raela says. “The geth weren’t programmed to hold grudges.”

Magdalene finishes her drink. She stares into the empty glass and blocks out the banter between the bartender and the quarian. So, she has a name at long last. Now what? Where is she going to go? Maybe she can get a job here on Omega in a shop somewhere. People here tend not to ask a lot of questions. So she’s heard, anyway. 

“What about you?” 

Magdalene looks up to find both the bartender and the quarian staring at her. She says nothing and simply stares back at them.

“Another drink?” Magnus asks again.

“Uh. Yeah, sure,” she says. He turns to make her drink, but the quarian’s attention stays on Magdalene.

“I haven’t seen you around here before,” the quarian says. She swirls her drink in her hand, apparently pensive. It’s strange not hearing a quarian speak through some sort of filter. The mechanical element to her voice is lost. 

Magdalene raises an eyebrow. “You come here often?”

“All the time,” she says, a small smirk on her face. “I like Omega. It’s…exciting.”

The bartender slides Magdalene her second drink and leans against the bar. “Raela is the only quarian I’ve ever known to enjoy being away from the Flotilla.”

“I love my people,” she says. “But the Fleet was crowded and dirty and I didn’t want to spend my whole life policing people on liveships. I wanted to see the galaxy. So I became a special forces marine. And it worked out for me.”

“What about Rannoch?” Magdalene asks. She knows that Tali was spending most of her time there; she only came to the Citadel to visit ‘Shepard.’ 

Raela simply shrugs. She opts not to answer, and instead continues to question her. “So what brings you to Omega…?”

“Magdalene,” she says. 

“Magdalene.” Raela rolls the name over her tongue. “Kind of long.”

“I like it,” Magdalene says, a bit defensively. She’s had the damn name for ten minutes and people are already criticizing it. Great. 

“Can you really say anything about long names, Raela’Shinar vas Nuraka?” Magnus says teasingly. The look he gives her is almost flirtatious.

Raela smirks and dismisses the remark with a faint wave of her hand. “I’ve nixed the ‘vas Nuraka’ part now. I’m not on the crew of anything. None of us are. I’m just plain old Raela’Shinar.” She looks back at Magdalene. “So. Mags. Where are you from?”

She gives her a suspicious look. “Why do you care?”

“I like talking to people,” Raela says. 

Shit; she didn’t think about this. People will eventually want to know about her if she stays here. Where she grew up, what her family is like, that kind of shit. Magdalene hasn’t given any thought to a fake backstory, but she’ll need one. It’s not like she can explain to people she’s a force-grown clone. “I…grew up on Elysium.”

“Were you there when Shepard saved the colony?” Magnus asks almost immediately.

Shepard, Shepard, Shepard. Can’t people talk about something else for once?

“No,” she says quickly. She sips at her drink. “I left when I was eighteen. Before the Skyllian Blitz.”

“What do you do?” Raela asks.

“I’m a merc.” It’s surprisingly easy to lie. A story quickly comes together in her mind. Born on Elysium, left to go make her own fortune as a mercenary. She’ll tell people she had very loving, supportive parents. She would have liked to have had parents who loved her, anyway. Her parents are Shepard’s parents, and God only knows where they are. 

Raela grins. “Oh, really? Well-”

There’s a sudden crash that gets all of their attention. A krogan, it appears, has thrown a human into a table. One of the bouncers rushes to detain him, but he gets smacked aside like he’s a fly. 

Magnus frowns. “Oh, Aria’s gonna be pissed.”

“Keelah,” Raela says. She reaches for her mask and clicks it back into place over her face. “Mags, help me with this.”

For a moment Magdalene just sits there. Then, hesitantly, she gets up from her seat and follows Raela over. Most of the patrons are backing away from the angry krogan. He’s massive, and obviously battle-worn. The remaining bouncers are circling like vultures, not certain what to do. But Raela walks right up to him and draws a pistol as though she’s not afraid of this monstrous creature.

“Get out,” she says.

“Why don’t you make me, suit-rat?” the krogan snarls. He charges at her, no doubt aiming to slam her into the ground. Raela steps aside nimbly and fires at his back. The shot does little more than anger him, and he turns on Magdalene. There’s blood rage in his eyes. He charges at her, and she rolls out of the way. 

Suddenly it’s as though a switch has been flipped. Magdalene suddenly reverts to all of the training Maya drilled into her when she was first awakened. She pulls her pistol and fires once, twice. The krogan charges again. She jumps over a table to avoid him. There are people cheering now. Some are encouraging them, some are egging on the krogan. Magdalene blocks them out. The krogan turns his attention back to Raela as she fires at him again. He charges, and she side-steps him gracefully. Then, shockingly, she jumps on to his back. It’s difficult given krogan anatomy, but she manages to get her arms around his neck and start squeezing. 

Magdalene can only watch in amazement as the krogan tries to throw Raela off. But she’s on tight, not letting go. It’s like some sort of absurdist rodeo, starring an angry krogan instead of a bull. Finally the krogan drops to his knees and chokes out, “Get off, Raela!”

She lightens the pressure on his neck. “You good, Trendok?”

“Yeah,” he grumbles, “I’m good. Too much ryncol.”

Raela hops off. “Go sleep it off. If you’re here when Aria comes down she’s going to be pissed.”

One of the bouncers approaches and grabs the krogan’s arm. He jerks it away and marches out of his own accord, grumbling all the way. Raela sets her hands on her hips and watches him go.

“…you _know_ him?” Magdalene says incredulously. Her breath is coming out in huffs. 

“Trendok? Oh yeah, we go way back. I met him on my Pilgrimage and he kind of took me under his wing,” Raela says. She begins to walk back towards the bar, and Magdalene follows her. “That was pretty impressive. What company are you with?”

It takes her a minute to realize she’s talking about mercenary companies. “No one right now.”

“Perfect,” Raela says. She looks towards Magnus. “What time do you get off?”

“I switch off with Yaara in ten,” Magnus replies.

“We’ll make this quick then,” Raela says. She looks back towards Magdalene. “I have a business proposition for you. I’m looking to start my own merc band. But I’ve been looking for the appropriate business partner.”

Magdalene raises an eyebrow. “And you want _me_ to be your partner? We met like fifteen minutes ago. You don’t know anything about me. I could be a serial killer for all you know.”

“What are the odds we’re _both_ serial killers?” Raela jokes.

“1 in 5,425,642,” the synthetic voice chimes in suddenly.

Magdalene can practically hear Raela rolling her eyes behind her mask. “Thank you, Tick. (“You are most welcome, Creator Raela.”) Look, I’m a great judge of character. And you’ve got the right stuff. Just consider it. Here, I’ll transfer you my number.” She pulls up her omni-tool and taps something in. Moments later, Raela’Shinar pops up as a new contact. “Call me once you’ve made up your mind.

“…alright, sure,” Magdalene says hesitantly. She goes back to her drink, sipping it while Raela and Magnus go back to their flirting. Minutes later an asari woman arrives to relieve Magnus of his station. Magdalene watches Raela lead him off through the crowd, clasping his hand in hers. 

For a moment she thinks of Garrus, but quickly pushes the thought of her mind. She’s left them – _all_ of them – behind. It’s time to find her own life. And she can’t do that with Garrus. 

She looks down at her omni-tool. Raela’s name sits there in her contacts, almost popping out at her. The prospect of creating her own merc group…well, it’s certainly tempting. What does she have to lose? She was trained to be a solider. Joining the Alliance isn’t an option for her- so this is the next best thing.

Magdalene finishes her drink. As she makes her way back to her tiny, dirty hotel room, she resolves to call Raela in the morning.


	2. Business Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday Tsughi!

She meets Raela the next afternoon at a crowded little diner not far from the Afterlife. Magdalene looks at the quarian uneasily as she sits down across from her. Now that she’s had several hours to think (and sober up) she’s beginning to doubt that starting a mercenary company with a person she barely knows is the best idea. But, for whatever reason, she’s turned up to the meeting anyway.

Raela gives her a friendly nod as she sits down. “Glad you decided to give me a call. I was worried you wouldn’t consider this. Most sane people wouldn’t.”

“Are you saying I’m not sane?” Magdalene raises an eyebrow.

“Not saying that at all,” Raela responds. “Just saying that most people wouldn’t consider going into business with a quarian they barely know.”

Magdalene leans back in her chair slightly. She’s forcing herself to unlearn the Commander’s mannerisms. Instead of sitting like a soldier – back straight, feet on the floor – she drapes one arm over the back of the chair. “I’m still on the fence about it, honestly.”

“Would it help if I told you about myself?” Raela asks. 

“Maybe,” she says.

Raela pauses momentarily as a batarian waiter walks over and all but drops their drinks on to the table. She takes off her helmet. Once again, the gesture surprises Magdalene. (Part of her thought she’d somehow imagined that while drunk.) She watches as Raela sips her drink – some sort of dextro soda – and smiles. “Well, my name is Raela’Shinar, daughter of two people who are no longer alive. I was a quarian special forces marine; ‘special forces’ means most of my missions involved me going off the Flotilla.”

“What sort of missions did you go on?” Magdalene asks.

“Lots of different shit. Mostly guarding researchers and explorers, though,” Raela says. “Which wasn’t boring, let me tell you. I went on one exploration mission with a ship looking for a new home world. We discovered a lot of interesting wildlife.”

“No intelligent species, however, much to your dismay,” chimes in a synthetic voice. 

Magdalene glances around, surprised, before remembering the bartender’s comment from the previous night. That’s right; Raela has a geth living in her suit. “And what’s the story behind…that?”

“Oh, you mean Tick?” Raela sips at her drink. “Not all that complicated, really. A bunch of us were standing on Rannoch, basically shoving our fists up our asses because, well. We worked to that point for almost four hundred years. And there was this overwhelming sensation of ‘Now what the fuck do we do?’ So the geth start making suggestions – where to build new settlements, that sort of thing – and we start actually talking to them and working with them. Then some of them are just ‘Hey, we could really help your immune systems if we downloaded ourselves into your suits.’”

“And people thought that was safe?” Magdalene stares at her in shock. Given the quarians’ history with the geth, it surprises her that they’d be so quick to trust them. Up until a year or two ago, most of the quarians wanted the geth eradicated. 

Raela laughs. “Of course not! But some of us are bad at decision making. Or just like taking risks. I let one download into my suit. Called it my ticking time bomb- though now I just call it Tick. Couldn’t live without it now. Literally.”

“I believe you mean figuratively, Creator Raela; you are quite capable of existing outside of your suit for extended periods of time,” Tick replies. 

“I like my suit. I’m not giving it up,” Raela says. “But yeah. What else do you want to know, Mags?”

She thinks. “Well. How’d you meet that krogan?”

“Ah, Trendok,” Raela says. She grins. “Well, I told you I met him on my Pilgrimage. The thing is, I had one of the shittiest Pilgrimages you could have-”

“Creator Zaena would beg to differ,” Tick interjects.

Raela lets out an irritated sigh. “Z’s Pilgrimage was on a completely different plane of shittiness. Anyways. I ended up here, on Omega. Bad place to be if you’re a young quarian. Even worse place to get caught stealing- yeah, that’s right. I’m the quarian that validates all the stereotypes.” She seems to be waiting for Magdalene to say something, but she bites her tongue. When she says nothing, Raela continues. “Well, I was starving and no one would hire me, so I started stealing credit chits. Stole from this one batarian and he noticed quick.”

“What happened?” Magdalene raises an eyebrow.

“Tried to shoot me. Then out of nowhere Trendok just charges in and headbutts him against the fucking wall!” Raela explains. “They knew each other – the guy had screwed him over on a job or something, I don’t know – and when he was done he just said ‘And I’m letting the suit-rat keep your credit chit, you four-eyed piece of pyjak shit!’” Raela laughs.

“Doesn’t exactly sound like the beginning of a magical friendship,” Magdalene says skeptically.

Raela shrugs. “It was. Trendok liked my spunk, decided to keep me alive. We stayed in touch after I went back to the Fleet.” She pauses. “I think he’ll join up with us. Not like there’s anything for him back on Tuchanka.”

Magdalene frowns. “Lost some people, huh?”

“His entire clan, including his daughter,” Raela says. She shakes her head. “But who didn’t come out of the war without losing someone? When you think about it, the Reapers are the best thing that happened to the galaxy; first they united us because we didn’t all want to die. And they’re still uniting us because of all the fucked up shit we saw while fighting them.” She pauses, tilting her head as she looks at Magdalene. “What about you? What’s your Reaper-related mental scarring?”

“None that I want to share,” she lies quickly. “Still kind of raw.”

Raela nods. “I can understand that. So. Let’s get to business.”

Magdalene sips at her drink. Part of her is still unsure about this. But what else is she going to do? It’s this or look for work elsewhere. Might as well take control of her own destiny while she can. “What sort of jobs would we be hired out for?”

“Nothing super illegal,” Raela says. “I’m thinking a task force- one that helps people, gets shit done that the governments can’t or won’t do. We’ll probably break the law, yeah, but we’re not going to be like the fucking Crimson Fist or anything.”

“The Crimson Fist was a large group of slavers,” Tick says. “Not mercenaries.”

“Ok, smartass. Keep it up and I’m going to delete you,” Raela threatens.

“Negative; you lack the proper programming skills to successfully disable geth software.”

“I’ll call Zaena and get her to do it.”

“Negative; Creator Zaena is busy with her new duties, and possesses a stronger moral compass than you. You monster.”

It dawns on Magdalene that Raela and Tick are…teasing one another? She’s heard that the geth have definitely become more life-like since the Reaper War. They’re independent and developing their own personalities. But she never imagined that they’d be this…animated. In truth, it’s nothing short of amazing. As little as three years ago a relationship like this would have been impossible. 

Raela finally ends the argument by threatening to purposefully download malware off the extranet. The threat shuts Tick up, and she turns her attention back to Magdalene. “Sorry about that. Its personality has been pretty strongly shaped by mine. And I happen to be an asshole.” She grins.

Magdalene can’t help but laugh a bit. “So, task force. We’re going to need armor. Weapons. Probably a ship. And, you know, people.”

“Well, we’ve got Trendok.” Raela holds up one finger. “With you and me, that makes three.” She holds up her other two fingers. “We’ll need to cover our bases. Get an asari on board so we can have a biotic. An engineer would be good, too – and before you say it, no, I don’t know shit about tech I was a fucking marine.”

“I didn’t say a word,” Magdalene says, holding up her hands. “What about your boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend? You mean Magnus? I mean, he went through the whole mandatory military service thing, but combat isn’t his style. And he’s not my boyfriend. We just hook up whenever I’m on Omega,” Raela says. 

“Along with several other partners,” Tick chimes in. 

“Shut up, Tick. But getting some turians wouldn’t hurt. Batarians are getting scarce these days since, you know, they’re trying to recover from the Alpha Relay explosion. And most of the batarians that are off-world are criminals anyway,” Raela says. 

“That is racist, Creator Raela.”

“It is literally illegal to leave their planet, Tick.”

“I am shocked someone so outspoken against prejudice against her people would stoop so low as to stereotype an entire species.”

“As I was saying,” Raela elects to ignore the geth entirely. “Batarians are probably going to be a no-go. But no one is going to take us seriously until we have our shit together.”

Magdalene nods. “We need equipment. And while I have a good amount of credits, I don’t have enough for a ship.”

“Neither do I,” Raela says. “But I know how we can get enough.”

“I’m not stealing,” Magdalene says.

“Funny.” Raela gives her an irritated look. “I had something else in mind, actually.”


End file.
